Linux for PVRs and Pocket PCs, DB Tuning Without the Database

Hello, Linux newsletter subscribers. As autumn continues to strike,
Portland and its environs are afflicted with falling leaves glued to the
pavement by falling water. While it's a pleasant enough view out of your
editor's second-floor office, it's rather a mess for long, constitutional
strolls. This is why we have OSCON in the summer!

All picturesque descriptions aside, let's dive right in to what's new in
the world of open source, as seen passing through ONLamp.com this week:

As governments, corporations, pundits, and zealots argue the merits of
open source operating systems on the desktop (where "Linux" is a synecdochal
metonomy), plenty of people are using Linux in embedded devices —
perhaps none as trademark-dilution-worthy as TiVo. Of course, once you know
the magic inside the device, you're halfway to building your own personal
video recorder on a spare Linux box. Joe Stump examines your options (and
several knowledgeable readers weigh in) in The
State of Home-Brew PVRs on Linux.

If set-top devices aren't your thing, how about hand-held devices? Though
the world seems to be migrating to wireless-enabled laptops, low battery
consumption, dedicated applications, and very small footprints make Pocket PCs
appealing for certain applications. As in the previous paragraph, why not run
Linux (or *BSD, per a couple of recent Michael Lucas stories)? John Litter
explores The
State of Linux on Pocket PCs.

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If you're more interested in getting your applications to work faster
(especially if they involve a database of some kind), don't fret. Before you
pull out your query analyzer and decompose the hairiest, ugliest, query into
interchangeable pieces, trying to trick the optimizer into doing the right
thing, are you sure you know the real problem? What if you're running into OS
limits? Steven Hauser makes his ONLamp debut with Quick
and Dirty RDBMS Tuning, explaining that sometimes, you can find more
improvements outside of the database.

Instead of summarizing this week's new weblogs, there's a new From the Editors List feature this
week, entitled Wireless
Mail on the Road. It features signatures, banter, and at least one editor
admitting he uses a laptop as a server.

Since one of three articles promised for this week has mysteriously
traveled forward in time at least two weeks, your editor has learned his
lesson about making promises for next week, except to say that you'll like it.

ONLamp.com and Linux Devcenter Top Five Articles Last Week

Installing Oracle 9iR2 on Red Hat 9
While Oracle's understandably proud of their Linux support,
Oracle 9i is unsupported on the latest and greatest Red Hat.
That doesn't mean it doesn't work, just that you'll have to
do a little tinkering. Roko Roic demonstrates how to install
Oracle 91R2 on Red Hat 9.

Printing for the Impatient
While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring
printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't
been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters.
Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter
make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates
quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration.

Understanding Network I/O: From Spectator to Participant
By design, the Internet is a simple network; any endpoint can
serve any client. Even better, it's easy to write a client or a
server, if you understand a few things about network programming.
George Belotsky demonstrates the essential concepts with Python.

The State of Home-Brew PVRs on Linux
A TiVo is basically a Linux box with some extra software (and a
nice service). That's something a competent hacker could replicate. Joe Stump explores the state of the home-brew PVR (personal video recorder) community on Linux as of late 2003.

GBA Programming with DevKit Advance
Emulation has opened up game programming to realms of hobbyists.
While it's possible to build amazing games on all sorts of obsolete
platforms, it's also possible to build them on modern ones,
including the GameBoy Advance. Howard Wen explores DevKit Advance
and interviews its lead developers.